Meat Puppets returns this spring with their 14th studio album — the 12-track Rat Farm, which Curt Kirkwood dubs “real blown-up folk music” — and will support the release with a spring U.S. tour that will include as-yet-unannounced appearances at the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas.

With their new album ‘Lollipop’ now out, the Meat Puppets have unveiled European tour dates and two rounds of U.S. concerts — including an upcoming stint with Slightly Stoopid — that will keep the band on the road for the rest of the spring.

While punk rock is most closely associated with the London and New York City scenes of the late 1970s, the Los Angeles strain that erupted in the early ’80s was just as vital — something Dave Travis attempts to document in his forthcoming DVD ‘A History Lesson Part 1: Punk Rock in Los Angeles in 1984.’